


our coffins of flesh and vibranium

by serenfire



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, and vision, but mostly a character study on wanda, character study for wanda, major spoilers for aou, word building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3904471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenfire/pseuds/serenfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda wants to rip all the plywood coffins apart with her bare hands, feel the splinters dig deep under her fingernails and anchor, like a ship in a fucking tide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our coffins of flesh and vibranium

**Author's Note:**

> @anyone I know irl: do not read thanks

Wanda wants to rip all the plywood coffins apart with her bare hands, feel the splinters dig deep under her fingernails and anchor, like a ship in a fucking tide. Pietro would have wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and then be untouched forevermore. 

Wanda _can’t do_ a funeral service. 

The funeral director showing her around the coffin displays frowns as red smoke pours from her veins without her consent. 

“Were you looking for something more high end, Ms. Maximoff?” 

Wanda grins blandly, the red sinking into the floor through the tile and nails digging crescents in her palms. “No, it’s fine,” she says, and gestures to the nearest coffin, an absurdly large price tag hanging from it. “I’ll take this one.” 

*** 

Vision, elected by Steve and Natasha to be her personal therapist, greets Wanda at the Avengers Tower. His mind is just the same and yet warped more than any human brain Wanda has encountered, including her own. He thinks in data and binary, but he still has emotion. 

He is worried for her. 

“I can take care of myself,” Wanda snaps. A simple ‘I’m fine’ would do nothing to calm his nerves, especially _his_ nerves, as they bleed yellow. 

“I am aware of that.” Vision walks beside her to the gym, where she can take her hurt-guilt-pain out on robots. He’s never been as incompetent as to suggest she work out her _experiences_ through words alone. 

(Like he has any room to talk on the subject, killing his father figure on the second day of his life.) 

Wanda can’t punch for shit, but Sam Wilson keeps trying to teach her how to throw a better right hook than the one inherited from weeks on the street between foster homes, time and time again. 

She punches the bag, remembering to bend at the knees and throw from her solar plexus and not her shoulder. 

Vision sits comfortably and asks her, “Was your shopping experience _truly_ that abysmal?” 

“ _Yes_.” She’s not a petulant child, but every single coffin in that store is not _good_ enough for her brother, and there is no way to enter the afterlife that would be, except bottling his ashes and throwing them from a balcony. He would like that, she thinks, and tells Vision so. 

“Then tell Tony,” he replies. “He doesn’t care much for funeral services either. He’s just doing this for your benefit.” 

“I know this.” Wanda punches the bag in silence until the space between her fingers itch with helplessness. “I don’t want anything from him.” 

“If you don’t tell him, he’s just going to throw money at you to get you to like him,” Vision frowns. “He did that to me.” 

“Did it work?” 

“Not in the slightest. If you want to throw your brother’s ashes from a window, then do it.” 

Wanda imagines the frozen body - shock-white hair, dark eyelashes, stubble that will never be shaved. She thinks of glittering ash flying from the top of the Tower, faster than Pietro had ever run, and she can feel Pietro’s mind in her own, his contentment made known. 

Wanda crumples the punching bag with her texturous red smoke, throwing it against the wall. “He was a great man,” she says. 

Vision looks at the dent in the wall long after the punching bag has rolled to the floor. “I know. I met him.” 

“The others that died that day, the robots,” Wanda says, palms aching in desperation, and she _needs_ someone to know this. “They didn’t have souls. They had no minds, just reflections of a program with so much fear. Pietro was the only one to die that actually lost something; the others had no _life_ in them. I felt him bleeding out, so slowly. I felt all his pain.” 

She stares at Vision and he knows what she’s thinking, but stalls, out of courtesy. “I see.” 

“I know you felt it too, killing Ultron,” Wanda says. “You were connected in your heads as well, and you _disintegrated_ him.” 

“Are you asking me _why_?” 

“I’m asking you what it felt like.” 

Vision blinked, and data scrolled in his brain, equations and emotions factoring. “It felt final.” 

Wanda nods repeatedly. Death always feels final, but there must be more to it than that. 

“May I ask what it felt like to you?” Vision asks. 

Wanda shrugs. “I’m not sure, really. The split second after his death it was like he felt _free_.” 

**Author's Note:**

> visit my [tumblr](http://www.tylerjosephstoast.tumblr.com) for critiques on aou


End file.
